


i’ll always think of you that way

by Kaleidoscope



Series: you would be the one i'd come and find [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Feels, Gen, M/M, Memory Loss, Music, Never have it back, Nostalgia, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Slash, Reminiscing, Taken by the war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:53:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaleidoscope/pseuds/Kaleidoscope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, the tension seems to ease, in odd, quiet little moments. Sometimes Bucky almost feels free; or perhaps doesn’t care that he’s not. There are these pauses. The spaces in between doing things, and going places, and thinking about recovered memories that would be better lost, and lost memories that leave holes like great tears in his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i’ll always think of you that way

**Author's Note:**

> Seeing as my writing has dried up lately, I've decided to start posting the already completed parts of the series, even if the chronologically earlier parts aren't finished yet. Please forgive me!!

i'll always think of you that way

Sometimes, the tension seems to ease, in odd, quiet little moments. Sometimes James almost feels free; or perhaps doesn't care that he's not. There are these pauses. The spaces in between doing things, and going places, and thinking about recovered memories that would be better lost, and lost memories that leave holes like great, bleeding tears in his mind.

The quiet breaths of time between the therapist's visits, the endless debriefings, and the activities the therapist suggests to aid in his recovery'. There are moments where the constant simmer of confusion and rage and guilt and _where am i who am i whatamidoing whyamihere_ seems to drop away, and he just _is_. Just exists and for a moment everything shifts into place and James feels a shadow of peace. He lives for those precious, rare moments. And sometimes...sometimes he thinks he lives for Steve.

James is 65 floors up and the people are ants. He presses both hands and his nose to the glass - he used to stare into store windows like this a child - watching the tiny ant-people scurry. They look so unimportant from up here. But if he doesn't consciously think about it, they look unimportant up close too. Because there is something Hydra broke in his brain, and no one knows if it will ever be fixed. James Barnes is a monster, now; inhuman and broken. He thinks about all the people he has killed, directly and indirectly, and his insides twist as though he has a bellyful of snakes. This moment is not one of the good ones; this is not a moment out of time, the endless pause between the exhale of breath and taking the shot.

The glass is cool beneath his splayed hands, and his breath makes an irregular circle of fog. Steve watches him nervously from the couch; James can feel the other man's eyes burning into his back. It's understandable; he is less prone to violent outbursts than he was when they first came here, but still, last week he had tried to break the glass with his vibranium arm and throw himself out. _An episode_ , the therapist called it in her soft, low voice that reminds him of Natalia, and yet is sometimes so soothing it makes James want to scream and hurt her. A flashback. Like the poor sops he remembers in snatches and glimmers that had gone funny during the war. But all James knows is that he'd broken three of Steve's ribs, his nose, two fingers, a coffee table, and managed to put his fist through the plate glass before the three tranqs that Natalia had fired had finally put him down.

Shell shock, they'd called it in the trenches. These days it is called PTSD, and bananas taste different, and people watch cats doing ridiculous - admittedly kinda funny - things on the internet. James has his own StarkTab that he's learning to use. But it is all so fucking stupid, underneath the harsh, brittle laughter. Life is so _stupid_.

He blinks and stares harder at the cars far, far down below on the busy, blaring streets. Lights and colours and people everywhere and glass and steel buildings clawing at the sky; how has the world changed this much? He'd seen glimpses of the changes in his outings' as the Winter Soldier, but that was different than now. The memories James has recovered of old missions are like viewing the world through stained glass; hazy and indistinct. Coloured all wrong. Like he's watching from above, hovering outside his own body, watching as he _hurts..._

"Hey, are -?" Steve's voice comes from just behind his shoulder, softly spoken but startling as a gunshot because James hadn't heard him get up, and he's already edgy, and that _name_. Before he can even think his metal hand is clamping around Steve's throat, and he spins them both 180 degrees, slamming Steve hard into the glass. A spider webbing of cracks crawl across the glass at the impact. Steve doesn't fight, just holds his hands up in placation, and in return James doesn't crush his windpipe but holds him just hard enough that Steve's throat bobs against James' grasp when he swallows, and his voice when he speaks is hoarse.

"Sorry, Bucky. Stupid of me. I wasn't thinking." The tip of Steve's tongue sweeps out to wet his lips, and he tries to force his voice into lightness. James flinches; he _hates_ the sound of his name on Steve's lips - he cannot stand it, because he is not that man anymore. He is not the man Steve thinks he is. He is a damaged weapon; dangerous and close to useless, as apt to backfire as not, and Steve still winces when he yawns and his fingers were splinted for three days. "Sorry. I - I didn't mean to startle you."

James drops his hand and steps away from Steve, eyes to the floor. "Don't call me that." Goddammit, they've had this exchange so many times before but Steve still keeps slipping up, and James both hates and loves him for it. He is not worthy. He is not that person. He isn't the _Bucky_ that Steve knew.

"Sorry...James," Steve says awkwardly, and James hates that nearly as much. It sounds wrong, just like everything else in the world is wrong, including himself. So he supposes, wryly, that at least it matches. He shrugs off Steve's apology silently and retreats to his small room in Steve's sprawling suite, shutting the door behind him with a click. There is a lock, but he doesn't bother with it; Steve or any other authorized personnel can override it. James sits down on the edge of the bed in his windowless, padded room, and stares blankly at the door. Everything is padded, like a damn asylum. Only one wall is painted over the quilted padding to look like the view they'd had from the fire escape outside Steve's bedroom window, so long ago. Steve painted it himself, and James loves him for it, even though his heart hurts and burns every time he looks at it. He _remembers._

"Would you like some music, Sergeant Barnes?"

A pause, and then James swallows hard. "Why not?" His voice is a rough, uncertain sound in the room, his hands knotting together in his lap.

"What would you like to listen to, Sergeant Barnes?"

James stretches out on the bed-covers, the bed dipping, the pillow too plump. His hands rest together on his stomach, soft cotton tee shirt beneath, flesh and bone hand toying idly - nervously - with the metal one. "Something from the war, Jarvis. If - if you can?"

The opening strains of "I'll _Be Seeing You"_ waft on the air then, and half-remembered snippets of dance halls and dames and Steve always there at his side, itch in James' skull. He shuts his eyes to the small room that comprises his present, and tries with a crease drawn sharp between his brows, to re-form the past in vivid completion in his mind's eye. But all he can see is Steve.

* * *

 


End file.
